Harper • Identity

Harper was a startup I co-founded to be a system-of-record for daily life with your dog. Inspired by my experience bringing home my dog Fitzgerald, I designed an app that brought together everything you needed to be a great dog owner.

We were a team of two. I owned product, app design, a touch of engineering, brand identity, marketing site, filming, editing, growth, and company fundraising.

Trying to design a pet brand identity that isn’t lame

For some reason, which to this day remains a mystery to me, the pet industry is almost entirely devoid of taste. It’s mostly cutesy copywriting, bad dog puns, and worse design. There are some exceptions of course, but the bar is low and with my startup Harper, we had to clear it.

We needed a brand identity and vibe that was at home with Millennials, particularly on Instagram. I was inspired by consumer health brands to help it feel the right kind of high status for that audience.

It couldn’t be too eight-bit and game-like. For the most part this was not a Discord and Twitch kind of audience. But it also couldn’t feel too premium. It was an app for your dog after all, and the subscription was a modest price point. You needed to sense that from branding.

Check out the full case study here: Harper